Ruth Paine House and collection examination



Ruth Paine House Museum and Visitor's Center
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018

  










Tuesday, June 12

Today, I learned that the Irving Archives manages the Ruth Paine house and Visitor's Center.  The reason for this is because the Irving Archives is part of the City of Irving's Arts and Culture Department therefore the Irving Archives assists with the management of several City of Irving's museums.

One can schedule a tour of the Ruth Paine House by contacting the Irving Archives and making an appointment.  Tour run three times a week or on request.  Tours begin in the Ruth Paine House and Visitor's Center which is located across the lobby from the Irving Archives.  This allows the guests to learn some of the background history about  the Paine and Oswald families that lived in Irving.   After touring the visitor's center, then the guests are taken to the Ruth Paine House and allowed to tour it.  I was allowed to come along on the Ruth Paine House tour that morning at 10:30am.  There were four of us including our guide, Chris, who is the other archivist at the Irving Archives.

Once we got to the house, we were allowed to tour the house on our on and read the various panels that were displayed throughout the house.  It was fascinating finding out that there is an Irving connection to the JFK assassination.  Ruth Paine befriended Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald and let them stay with her in her house.  Lee Harvey Oswald stayed the night before JFK's assassination, which lead local police and FBI agents to Ruth's house after that fateful event.  Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald along with the various other residents living in the house were caught up in the whirlwind investigation after the tragedy in 1963.

The house was purchased by the City of Irving in 2009 to make sure that history is preserved and in 2013 it was opened as a museum that provides multi-media presentations to allow visitors to learn about the lives of those living in the house.  The house has been restored to its 1963 look for a more historic feel of those times.

Once we returned from the Ruth Paine House, I worked on the Las Colinas Women's Association examining the contents of a couple of the boxes.  Later that afternoon, Kevin introduced me to the Oral History project that I would be working on while working at the Irving Archives.  I began listening to Myrtle White's interview and transcribing what was said during the interview.  I asked how people got copies of the interviews that the Irving Archives have and Kevin told me that the tapes are digitized into a wav file then emailed to the person that requested.  Most of time people would get a copy of the transcript of the interview, therefore the only time when the tape is digitized is when the person wants to hear the voice of the person who gave the interview.  Even though there was only one tape for Myrtle White, I did not get to finish transcribing it.


  
Ruth Paine House
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018  

      
Ruth Hyde Paine
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018





Marina Oswald
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018
  


Ruth Paine House Dedication plaque
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018
Ruth Paine House Historical plaque
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018
             










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